Abe Korotki Leads WPT Borgata Open Day 1A Field

Monday, September 19th, 2011 by Ryan

As Day 1a of the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Open came to a close, the top 5 was rounded out by a few unknown players, and a few players who are considered to be the more popular names in poker. While Abe Korotki may not be a household name to most, he wrapped up Day 1a with an impressive 260,100 chips, while players who are a bit more well-known like Vanessa Selbst and Will Failla found themselves at the top as well, with Selbst holding 198,675 chips and Failla ending the day with 189,500 chips. Failla may be one of the hottest players in poker currently, as he recently won the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker Main Event, and also made it deep in the 2011 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event as well, finishing in an impressive 14th place. Failla seems to be doing no wrong in poker lately. Darren Elias was another one of the popular names who finished the opening day near the top, as he finished up with 191,200 chips.

Day 1a featured an impressive 460 total entrants, and this format is a bit different than most tournaments; as it will allow any player who is knocked out of the event during Day 1a to re-register on Day 1b. This tournament is on a record pace currently to be the largest WPT event in history; and some say that it is almost a foregone conclusion. While 460 total players began the day, only 245 were able to make it through Day 1a. The two fields will combine on Tuesday after Day 1b comes to a close late tonight. The buy-in for the Borgata Open is set at $3,500, and was actually the first of the World Poker Tour events to make this change to the lower limit buy-in. Currently, the Borgata Open is in its third year of being a $3,500 buy-in event, and one of the reasons why people feel so confident about it breaking the record for the largest WPT event, is the fact that it consistently seems to have a larger Day 1b field, than Day 1a field.

Last year’s Open was taken down by Dwyte Pilgrim, and featured an impressive $3 million prize pool. With the projections for the 2011 event of 1,400 entries; that would mean that the prize pool would be an incredible $4.5 million, which tells quite a bit about how far poker in the United States has come since the scare of Black Friday. This event does things quite a bit differently than most others do as well, mainly due to the fact that they offer the chip leaders of both Day’s 1a and 1b $5,000 for finishing at the head of the field. This means that Abe Korotki has not only already won his buy-in back, but also taken home a nice bonus as well for his strong Day 1 play.

Day 2 will kick off on Tuesday, and could potentially feature some of the bigger names in poker in general, especially with players like Failla and Selbst near the top of the leaderboard. We’ll keep close track of how the event goes throughout the week as well.